It's interesting that crowdfunding could really be a sustainable model for game development going forward; Double fine basically have all their development costs paid up front, so any extra sales on steam or whatever will be pure profit. I don't think it's a model that would work for every game, but it could be an interesting direction for small-medium studios like double fine to pursue; say once every 6-18 months they come up with another game they want to put out there, see if they can get it crowd funded, then if it gets funded they can go ahead with it. They can still do their more mainstream XBLA games etc. as their bread and butter, and use these games to keep the studio busy in between more traditional games.

The other interesting point is the "pay what you want" part of the model: people can put in $1 and just see how the game turns out, or they can put in $15 to get a copy of the game or release, or the really dedicated fans can pay more to get extra bonuses like lunch with Tim. This is a huge change from the traditional "one price for all" game pricing. It's also great that basically all of the money raised is going towards the game and the studio that made it.

Their $300,000 estimate doesn't seem very high. After taxes, that's probably enough for 2-4 full time dev-years (and they'll need programmers, artists, musicians, et al.). Not to mention infrastructure costs, lawyers, advertising, etc.